AI leaps ahead with Google's new 'thinking' program

Deep Mind, a British artificial intelligence company owned by the internet giant, has developed software that repeatedly beat the European champion at the board game, an advance that has evaded researchers for years and was believed to be a decade away. Go, a Chinese pastime that dates back 2500 years, is one of the last games in which humans have maintained their superiority over machines. Its rules are simple: opponents using black and white stones to try to dominate as much of the board as possible, but it takes a lifetime to master. There are 10 times as many potential moves in any one turn than in chess, and the number of game combinations exceeds the number of atoms in the universe. Its vast number of possible outcomes means machines…